Recourse to terrorism shows cowardice: Iranian official

Smoke is seen during a terrorist attack on the Iranian Parliament’s building in central Tehran on June 7, 2017. (Photo by Tasnim news agency)

A senior Iranian diplomat says the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group is resorting to barbaric terrorism, which shows its degradation and cowardice.

“Daesh resorts to brutal terrorism … and brutality and barbarism are its main features,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Saturday.

He pointed to last week’s twin terrorist attacks in the Iranian capital Tehran and said there are masters who are directing the Daesh terrorists.

The Iranian official added that Daesh elements’ recourse to terrorism shows their degradation, defeat, fear, cowardice and most important of all their confusion.

Araqchi emphasized that Daesh terrorists randomly shot at innocent people, which “shows that they have not achieved their goals.”

He said the confused masters of the Daesh group are to blame for the terrorist attacks in Tehran, adding, “Indiscriminate terrorism sees no option but the killing of innocent humans and this is a catastrophe which is repeated in Iraq and Syria every day.”

At least 17 people were killed and 52 others injured in Tehran on Wednesday when gunmen mounted almost simultaneous assaults on Iran’s Parliament and the Mausoleum of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini.

Daesh claimed responsibility for the two attacks.

Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said in a statement on Friday that following a series of sophisticated intelligence operations and with the cooperation of the families of some of the terrorists, 41 elements of Daesh were identified and arrested before conducting any act of terror.

It added that the terrorists were detained in the Iranian provinces of Kermanshah, Kordestan, West Azarbaijan and Tehran.

An official with the Justice Department of Iran’s Alborz Province, Ahmad Fazelian, also said on Saturday that eight more individuals have been arrested in connection with the terrorist attacks in Tehran.

He added that the eight were accused of having provided backup for the five terrorists who carried out the two attacks in Tehran.

All the five assailants involved were subsequently killed by Iranian security forces.

Meanwhile, Tehran police said the car used by the terrorists for the twin attacks was discovered on Saturday in central Tehran.

The terrorists first went by the car to Imam Khomeini’s Mausoleum and after dropping two of them, went to the city center to carry out the terrorist attack in the parliament, it added.